WESTEFER v. SNYDER
725 F.Supp.2d 735 (2010)
United States District Court, S.D. Illinois.
July 20, 2010.
As already has been discussed, the parties to this case have proposed a number of prisons as comparatives of Tamms for purposes of determining whether, measured against such prisons as a baseline,
Tamms imposes atypical and significant hardship in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. Among these proposed comparatives is the OSP, the supermax prison in Ohio that, as already has been discussed, was the subject of constitutional due process scrutiny by the Supreme Court of the United States in Wilkinson. In Wilkinson the Court outlined the conditions of confinement at the OSP as follows: Conditions at OSP are more restrictive than any other form of incarceration in Ohio, including conditions on its death row or in its administrative control units. The latter are themselves a highly restrictive form of solitary confinement. In OSP almost every aspect of an inmate's life is controlled and monitored. Inmates must remain in their cells, which measure 7 by 14 feet, for 23 hours per day. A light remains on in the cell at all times, though it is sometimes dimmed, and an inmate who attempts to shield the light to sleep is subject to further discipline. During the one hour per day that an inmate may leave his cell, access is limited to one of two indoor recreation cells.
Incarceration at OSP is synonymous with extreme isolation. In contrast to any other Ohio prison, including any segregation unit, OSP cells have solid metal doors with metal strips along their sides and bottoms which prevent conversation or communication with other inmates. All meals are taken alone in the inmate's cell instead of in a common eating area. Opportunities for visitation are rare and in all events are conducted through glass walls. It is fair to say OSP inmates are deprived of almost any environmental or sensory stimuli and of almost all human contact.
Aside from the severity of the conditions, placement at OSP is for an indefinite period of time, limited only by an inmate's sentence. For an inmate serving a life sentence, there is no indication how long he may be incarcerated at OSP once assigned there. Inmates otherwise eligible for parole lose their eligibility while incarcerated at OSP.
Wilkinson, 545 U.S. at 214-15, 125 S.Ct. 2384 (citations omitted). As the Court hopes is plain from the discussion of conditions in the supermax prison at Tamms set out in previous sections of this Order, any difference between conditions of confinement at the OSP and conditions of confinement at Tamms is de minimis.
For example, while it appears that inmates at Tamms are not actually prohibited from attempting to communicate between cells, as already has been discussed such communications can be conducted only with great difficulty, so much so that IDOC inmate Isiah Bell testified that his verbal communication skills were atrophying the longer he remains in confinement at the supermax prison at Tamms. In his testimony Bell told the Court, "[Y]ou have to excuse my social skills I been in this kind of situation for so long that I basically don't know how to talk. I don't know how to express myself. And as you see, it's kind of hard for me to look you straight in the eye so excuse that." Doc. 433 (Testimony of Isiah Bell) at 19. It seems reasonable to suppose that such unsatisfactory communication as Tamms inmates are able to conduct between cells is insufficient to stave off the harmful psychological effects of long-term confinement in isolation that, as the Court already has discussed, many Tamms inmates, both past and present, display. Similarly, Defendants have argued that Tamms is not as harsh as the OSP because prisoners at Tamms earn day-for-day good time credit, while prisoners at the OSP do not. However, although prisoners at Tamms are eligible for day-for-day good time, they are not eligible, as
already has been discussed, for other types of good time credit provided for by Illinois statutes, such as good time credit for completion of education and substance abuse programs or for holding prison industry jobs, because there are no work, education, and substance abuse programs at Tamms, and they are not eligible for meritorious good time credit. Defendants point out also that, unlike the OSP, electric lights are not kept on twenty-four hours a day in the cells of Tamms inmates. While this perhaps is so, the Court is not satisfied that this distinction proves that conditions of confinement at the OSP are significantly more restrictive than the conditions of confinement at Tamms. The fact is that the IDOC has conceded that the conditions at Tamms are substantially identical to the conditions at the OSP. As IDOC Director Randle's Ten-Point Plan acknowledges, "`supermax' operations within the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction are very similar to that in Illinois." Ten-Point Plan (Plaintiffs' Exhibit 7) at 9. The Court notes also that IDOC Director Randle appears to have been appointed to his current post by Governor Quinn in great part because of Randle's extensive professional experience with the OSP and the procedures for placing inmates there, which were found in Wilkinson to comport with procedural due process under the Constitution. See Wilkinson, 545 U.S. at 224-30, 125 S.Ct. 2384. Before taking his current position, IDOC Director Randle worked for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for over nineteen years. See Doc. 522 (Randle Testimony) at 5. His last position with that agency was as Assistant Director. See id. As Assistant Director in Ohio, Randle worked with legal staff and the warden of the OSP to review policies governing placements at the OSP and to make recommendations for changes in those policies in light of the Wilkinson decision. See id. at 6. Following Randle's appointment as IDOC Director, one of the first directives he received from Governor Quinn was to review the conditions and operational procedures at Tamms. See id. Correspondingly, on Randle's first full day as IDOC Director he spent about ten hours at Tamms, toured the prison, talked with the administration, staff, and prisoners, and reviewed policies and procedures. See id. at 7. In September 2009 IDOC Director Randle issued his Ten-Point Plan which, as already has been noted, recommends to Governor Quinn a number of important changes in IDOC procedures related to Tamms. See id. at 8-9. As noted, the Ten-Point Plan has been approved by Governor Quinn. See id. at 41-42. The Court already has found that Tamms resembles the OSP closely in the three salient respects noted in Wilkinson, e.g., severe limitations on human contact, the indefinite duration of placement at Tamms, and the effect of confinement at the Illinois supermax prison on the length of an inmate's sentence. Thus, the Court finds that for purposes of procedural due process analysis there are no constitutionally-meaningful differences between the conditions of confinement at the OSP and those at Tamms.
1. The Court notes that there is also a minimum security prison at Tamms; all references to Tamms in this Order are to the supermax prison there.
2. This perhaps is the place to note that this Order is intended to be a concise account of the bench trial conducted on the procedural due process claims in this case, and to that end only matters deemed by the Court to be credible, material, and relevant will be reported. The reader should presume that evidence omitted from the Court's findings of fact was considered by the Court to be irrelevant or in any event less persuasive than competing evidence. The Court notes in passing that, in addition to alleging violations of procedural due process, Plaintiffs Von Perbandt, Taylor, Sparling, Sorrentino, Santiago, V. Rodriguez, E. Rodriguez, Lasley, Knox, Horton, Harper, Felton, Combs, Clayton, Chapman, Burrell, Bivens, and Cunningham also assert claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that they were assigned by Defendants to the supermax prison at Tamms in retaliation for filing grievances and lawsuits and engaging in other protected activities challenging the conditions of their confinement, in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. These retaliation claims have been resolved in a series of jury trials, and they are not at issue here.
3. In fact, statistical data assembled by the IDOC shows that the average time served for the current population at Tamms is 73.4 months, or over six years. See Ten-Point Plan (Plaintiffs' Exhibit 7) at 6. Seventy of the 243 inmates (28.3%) have been at Tamms for at least ten years, and more than half have been at Tamms for over five years. See id. at 8. Over three-quarters (76.9%) or 190 of the inmates at Tamms have been there for over three years. See id., Table 4.
4. The Court recognizes that it is assuming here that, were work, education, and substance abuse programs available at Tamms, inmates of the supermax prison would participate in such programs. This assumption seems reasonable to the Court. Participation in such programs doubtless would be a happy alternative to the crushing monotony of being confined alone in a cell for up to twenty-four hours a day that currently is the lot of Tamms inmates. Also, it seems probable that Tamms inmates would welcome the opportunity to earn money by participating in work programs, in order to purchase small items like walkmans or arch supports that make life in a place like Tamms somewhat more bearable. See Doc. 433 (Testimony of Adolfo Rosario) at 50-51 (the witness, a Tamms inmate, complained that the shoes issued to him by Tamms correctional personnel lack arch supports, but he cannot purchase shoe inserts at the prison commissary because he is indigent and has no money to spend at the commissary).
5. Finally, although strictly speaking Point Two of IDOC Director Randle's Plan is not concerned with the issue of whether or not an inmate should be placed at Tamms, it is worth noting that Point Two protects inmates from spending an unnecessary amount of time in the supermax prison. Under the Plan, as already has been noted, upon arrival at Tamms new inmates of the supermax prison will be advised at orientation of the probable length of their stay at the prison, expressed as a range of possible terms of supermax confinement; further, inmates will work with counselors to ensure that they achieve the behavioral levels necessary to be transferred out of Tamms in the least possible time. See Ten-Point Plan (Plaintiffs' Exhibit 7) at 16; Doc. 522 (Randle Testimony) at 13-14.